Looks Smarter than a Box of Rocks

[digitS']

Okay, a basket of rocks!

I have seen a close-up of this wall and it, for all the world, looks like it was put together with those plastic milk crates that you see at the backdoor of every supermarket. Like the one I sit on when I work in garden beds .

There is something called a "gabion wall." They aren't terribly attractive -- just do a google image search.

Gabion is an Italian word and just means "basket." So, they are heavy wire baskets and they are filled with rocks. (Filling them with rocks would make them really heavy!)

The civil engineers are using them all over the place for retaining walls - along highways. I have even seen them holding up hillside paths in parks.

Okay, what about a shovelful or 2 of good soil and a plant in there with the rocks? Voil: A green wall/vertical garden!

Steve

 

[so lucky]

I saw some of those near Nashville a few months ago. I didn't think they looked very permanent, but I guess they have been thoroughly tested. I wouldn't want them holding up my house, tho!

 

[digitS']

Well, So Lucky, I am thinking of their usefulness as a retaining wall. The light isn't the best but I just thought the picture above (Amazon campus in Tacoma, building owned by Paul Allen) showed what might be done with a basket . . . holding something. What it is probably holding is the same material used for an erosion blanket. That might be cocunut fiber or a synthetic, poly-something.

But, that's against the wall of a building.

If you search enuf, you will find some folks have put those gabion walls against buildings. I don't know why they did that . As a retaining wall, fence or just a landscape feature of some sort, they could be attractive if they are growing plants. If you search enuf, you will find that the civil engineers have been planting grass on some of their gabion walls. Well, that looks better than stacked baskets of rocks! I think they could do a little better. And, I think it would be much, much more permanent than those vertical pallet plantings used for a wall.

Now, I just need to ask myself if I am willing to build wire baskets. Certainly have the rocks, a shovelful of dirt, a plant .

Steve

 

[Ridgerunner]

@digitS' since you linked this thread in another post, I'll comment here. I'm a retired civil engineer, but my area of expertise was large steel structures, not roadwork or such. Still, some of my college courses were on roadwork and I certainly had to worry about erosion control.

In certain applications gabions work great. The limiting factor in how long they last is the wire used. Some manufacturers guarantee a 50 year life. Thin steel wire that gets the coating scratched by the rocks won't last long. One big benefit to them is that they will conform to the shape off the ground underneath so you are less likely to get erosion under them. The rock drains really well, but dissipates the force of the water going through them. That means it slows the water while running through them so it does not move so fast as it exits so erosion is less.

There comes the flaw in your plan to put a little dirt on top and grow things like grass so they look better. They drain really well. You'd have to set up an irrigation system to keep the grass from drying up and dying, assuming it ever sprouted. Way too expensive to do that.

 

[digitS']

How about if I just filled it with what I laughingly call my "garden soil," @Ridgerunner ?

It would amount to a raised bed . . .

At about 50% rocks, it might hold together long enough for plant roots to secure the "planting media."

I should make a study of what grows on the rockiest ground around here . . . like, without irrigation. Might amount to next to nuthin'.

Steve

 

[Ridgerunner]

Yeah, Steve, you have that rocky ground you don't exactly live in a moist climate. We all have our challenges but you have a few some of us don't.

Several years back we took a driving trip with the boys through the states that make up the four corners. We covered a lot of those states. I noticed two things. Most of the time, what grass there was grew in bunches, not in a carpet. Lots of bare spots. I also noticed we could drive practically all day and only have one or two bugs to clean off the windshield. When we were looking at places to retire, knowing I wanted to garden, two of my criteria were that grass had to grow in a carpet not in bunches and there had to be enough moisture to allow bugs to live.

 

[digitS']

Ha! Ha!

No bunchgrass prairie for RidgeRunner!

I got it. A fiber "wick" 200' into our aquifer, right up thru the boxes of rocks. . . okay, so I haven't got all this worked out. (Haven't started making those wire boxes or stacking plastic milk crates, either .)

Steve